Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8023. Whether we may pray to angels is a question I want to answer with real clarity, because the stakes are higher than they first appear. Prayer is not a neutral activity. It is worship, and worship belongs to God alone. Scripture nowhere invites us to pray to angels, records no example of anyone…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8022. Whether we may speak to angels is a fair question, because the Bible is full of people who did exactly that. Zechariah answered Gabriel. Mary questioned him. Manoah asked for a name. Nobody in Scripture is ever rebuked for replying to an angel who has come to them. The distinction that matters, and…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8021. Whether we can see angels is one of those questions that people ask me quietly, usually after a service, usually because something has happened that they cannot explain. Scripture does not laugh at the question. It takes the unseen world seriously, and it tells us enough to answer honestly without pretending to know…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8020. Whether angels appear today is a question I get asked more often than almost any other in this category, usually by someone who has heard a story and does not know what to do with it. The honest answer has two parts, and both need saying. Scripture nowhere states that angelic appearances have…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8018. The four angels bound at the great river Euphrates appear in Revelation 9:14 and 15, and the detail that stops most readers is not the binding but the timing. They are released for the hour, the day, the month, and the year. That is a strange way to describe a moment. It is…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8017. Abaddon and Apollyon are two names for a single figure, and Revelation 9:11 gives us both because John is writing for readers in two languages. He is called the angel of the bottomless pit, and both of his names mean the same thing: Destroyer. That is a rare piece of transparency in a…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8014. The phrase host of heaven runs right through the Old Testament, and it does two quite different jobs depending on where you find it. In some passages it names the angelic armies surrounding God’s throne. In others it names the sun, moon and stars, usually in the context of a warning against worshipping…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8013. Named angels are far rarer in Scripture than most Christians assume. Ask around a congregation and you will hear Raphael, Uriel, sometimes Raguel or Sariel, and a general impression that the Bible contains a substantial roll of angelic names. It does not. There are two. Michael and Gabriel. That is the complete list…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8012. The angel Gabriel is the second of only two angels named in Scripture, and where Michael fights, Gabriel explains. Every appearance follows the same shape. He arrives at a moment of great significance, he brings understanding, and he announces what God is about to do. His name in Hebrew, gabri el, means something…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8011. Michael the archangel is one of only two angels named in the canonical Scriptures, and of the two he is the one consistently found in conflict. His name is a question in Hebrew, mi ka el, meaning who is like God, and the expected answer is nobody. That name turns out to be…